a cue from beth

As I have been inspired by so many of Beth's posts, I decided I would give all you loyal readers a quick taste of what has been cooking in my kitchen. No, sadly you can't really taste it. However, I love to cook so if you bring yourself over, with a little warning, I will attempt to whip you up something palate pleasing. So here is what Claire and I had for dinner on Friday night.


I think I will call it Upside Down Stuffed Avocado. As you will probably notice, or have noticed in the past, I like to infuse a south of the border flair into my cooking. This recipe was a self created one. I decided this year I was going to find a good balance between using the 8 billion cookbooks I have and creating my own recipes. Someday I will compile my own creations into my own Tastebook.


The only problem I had with this meal was that I eyeballed the amount of olive oil put into the rice. Well, I'll admit, we all make mistakes and I over did it a bit so it came out just a tad on the oily side. Cutting the oil back would have made this probably a big winner, in this instance it just came out to be a good meal.



RECIPE:
1 Avocado (Halved, Peeled, and seed removed)
1 Chicken Breast (Grilled, Baked, or cooked to your preference)
1 Handful of Panko Crumbs
1 Cup Cilantro
1/2 Cup Green Onion
4 Chopped Button Mushrooms
1 Box of your favorite Spanish Rice (or make your own)
Salt, Pepper, Chili Powder, Tabasco, Cumin, Paprika, Fajita Seasoning, and Olive Oil

Saute the Mushrooms, Green Onion, Chicken in olive oil. Add all seasonings to taste. I like it strong so I pack it all on. Cover outside of Avocado with panko crumbs and quickly fry in olive oil until crumbs are light brown. Toss chicken mixture with fresh cilantro and portion onto the rice.
Top with the avocado, pitted side down and serve.

Enjoy.

i learned from the best

I found some really awesome news out today, even if it was a year late. As most of you know I work in the food industry and I grew up with most of my jobs being food industry related. I worked my way through college at the Edge Cafe. Basically a cafe for a private dorm. Although you wouldn't think they would have great food (it was average) it IS where I learned a lot of what I know about cooking. I accredit that to one man: Rich Risbon. Rich was my boss at Edge cafe and taught me a lot about spices, knife skills, and lots of different culinary techniques. Such as how to flip an omelette, make a decent stir fry, toss pizza dough, cook and cut a large variety of meats, and properly mix and match seasonings. Thanks to three years at The Edge.

Today while scouring the blog world I came across somebody who had reviewed Hullabaloo Diner. Hullabaloo is the place my boss was preparing to open as I was graduating college. I never got to eat there but did visit it once before it was open. It has an original train car diner shipped all the way from New York. Very cool atmosphere and some great home cookin'. The best part was that it was featured on Food Network's Diner's, Drive-In's, and Dives. It makes me really proud to know that is who I learned to cook from. Check out the video below:



Now I have to go eat there.

and a week goes by

After churning out the blogs Claire and I got rather busy with real life. I guess that happens when you have friends in town for the weekend and you are organizing a three day trip, there and back, to Phoenix.

We finally finished up our detox diet last Monday, a week ago. We did have a splurge meal at Sushi Caliente to celebrate. We made it a light/sort of healthy meal though. You can read about it here. Anyways, both of us feel much better and can tell a noticeable difference when we eat "fatty" foods compared to when we stick with the diet's plan. After this weekend of eating out with friends, we both came away wanting to just eat vegetables. It's weird how that works. As of tomorrow we will have both gone 28 days without sodas, and for the most part without caffeine. If you knew either of us before we had a very high Diet Coke (Claire) and Dr. Pepper (Myself) consumption. We have challenged ourselves to stick as closely as possible to the diet, with a few splurges here and there. You can't just give up your favorite frozen yogurt place, MMMMM....Tomunchi. So far we have both lost some weight and I can't believe I am saying it but I would suggest the diet to anyone looking to feel better and have the extra benefit of losing weight. You can still cook great things like my own creation: eggplant stack. We used a chicken sausage from Whole Foods stuffed with spinach and feta. All you do is grill up your eggplant, cook the sausage, slice up some avocado, grill some thin strings of onions and stack it up. I served it along side some steamed broccoli and okra with crumbled feta on top and some candied pecans for a little bit of a sweet kick.


Claire also set out on a mission to re-organize our study closet. After visiting Ikea, twice, we had picked up enough organizational tools that she could get started. She set out on a weekend/week of organizing, sorting, adding new books, removing old magazines, and creating general destruction of our study floor. But in the end she did an amazing job and we now have a fully labeled and accessible closet. I am still of the opinion that Claire would make an amazing personal organizer for people.

After working most of the week Mark and Amanda came in town and we had the chance to relax and hang out. We ate at Kerby Lane, ate at Sprinkles (the arch-rival of Tomunchi) and we played Rock Band over at John and Sara Vershaw's apartment. It was a blast and who knew I could sing so well. Yesterday we had some free time after work and headed out to one of our favorite Austin parks with the dogs, Walnut Creek Park. We hiked around down in the creek bed, which, contrary to the picture below, is completely dry and barren due to the lack of rain this summer. Yet it made for a fun, 2ish mile hike as well as good exercise.


Brooke is coming into town this week and then we head out to phoenix for the weekend so hopefully we can get a few more updates in for you loyal readers about how exciting our suburban lives are.